“The Burns Block is basically one of our three properties that is tied right on to where Rainy River is going to develop their mine. They’ve got a pit plan that comes right up to the border. They had optioned it from us back in 2006-2007, and we got from it them in 2008 when the markets collapsed—they didn’t complete their option agreement. So we decided last year, in April/May, that we would just raise the money and start drilling it and prove the extension of their ore body as it moves west to east—it comes right across our property—and that’s what we’re doing.

“These assays are spectacular. They’re a follow-up to what we did last September. We came out with a hole then—Hole 18, right down in the southwest corner of our block—the guts of which was about 10 metres of, roughly, one ounce. Then Hole 15 to the northeast of that was in the range of about 9 metres of a half-ounce. Now, this is right on line with those two, but way up to the north part of the property. You could put a ruler right through all three of them. And this one you’ve got that core section of 11 metres of two-ounce. It’s huge. And it’s close to surface. We know that on the whole property the main ore body dips north to south, at about 50 degrees. It comes to surface right along our northern border, so everything as we drill up north is very shallow, everything along the southern border is deeper. On this particular hole we intersected the beginning of the zone at about 15 metres.

We’re doing what we said we would do—prove the overall extension of their deposit. And hitting these high-grade shoots—well, I’ve never seen a hole like that before.—Jim Pettit

“We have enough funding right now to another 50,000 metres. We’re almost up to 50,000 metres that we’ve already done. We’ve got three rigs turning, two of them are step-outs—we’re stepping out to the east gradually, in basically four picket lines of holes. One of them is doing definition drilling and infill drilling behind, because the system that runs through the region has these high-grade shoots throughout it, and they’re dramatically different from the main ore zone. The main ore zone is relatively low grade—I think Rainy River’s average grade is about 1.2 g/t. We hit these shoots, and they are just spectacular.

“We haven’t produced [a resource estimate] yet, and I don’t think we’ll be around long enough. It’s one of those things. This is a potential mergers-and-acquisitions deal and a hell of a good gold story. Everything we’ve done so far is within 200 metres of our western border where Rainy River’s pit would normally end. Their last resource deepened their pit by 50 metres which generally means you extend the walls out. We’ll figure out a resource to determine that, but we’ve also got just about the only outcrop in the whole region—because it’s a swamp. They could easily put their mill on our property because that’s where the infrastructure would probably sit, on the outcrop. I don’t see [Bayfield] taking the Burns Block to production, because [Rainy River] own all the land around us. We’re just going to make it enticing enough. That’s our goal, and we’ve got to create that value so they understand that they’re better with it than without it.

“The project is really going great. The phones are ringing off the hook. We’re doing what we said we would do—prove the overall extension of their deposit. And hitting these high-grade shoots—well, I’ve never seen a hole like that before. It’s pretty spectacular. And that would be in [Rainy River's] pit, because it starts at 15 metres and goes to 95 metres deep. And it comes to surface, probably just north of where we have the rigs.”